


Temple Throb, Dust Lakes

by Alastael



Category: Borderlands (Video Games), Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Dismemberment, Episode 5, Gen, Introspection, Strangulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 09:13:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16194527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alastael/pseuds/Alastael
Summary: I mean, how do you fuck up this badly?





	Temple Throb, Dust Lakes

He’s never been prone to introspection. 

 

But, in the suffocating silence of the pod, Rhys has nothing but time. Immediately, the thought of LoaderBot is pushed from his mind, packed neatly away into one of many compartments. No, he’s not prone to thinking. He’s a man of action. Or opportunity. Or something. 

 

Yvette’s voice in his head, a memory. A conversation from so long ago now: _Jesus Rhys, it’s like you don’t even have an original thought in that stupid head -_

 

_I know what I want,_ he had snapped, with as much confidence as he could muster at the time.

 

And yet.

 

His eyes drift upwards through the fishbowl roof of the pod, and he can see it all collapsing around him. Helios, Hyperion, his fucking _everything_ falls with increasing intensity towards the dust lakes of Pandora, and he thinks of how much he wanted, how much he took and took and _took._

 

He curls into himself, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until the circuits in his skull spark in distress, a warning. 

 

_I mean, how can you fuck up this badly,_ he thinks but the voice in his head is so distinctly not his own that his head snaps up to search the monitors, but the angry red blips monitoring the pod’s condition are still there, an unusual comfort. 

 

He thinks of Hyperion before Jack, before that garish yellow makeover and what kind of person likes the color yellow that much anyway? Poor color choices aside, could it really have been much different? Fewer people being ejected out of airlocks, perhaps, but people like Jack aren’t born, they’re _made_. 

 

He’s breathing faster now, something resembling terror clawing it’s way up his throat as Pandora continues to approach. He wonders suddenly if the planet itself knows about the mining contract. He wonders if Fiona knows about it. He files that one away for later: _ask Fiona if Eridium mining has negatively impacted the civilians of Pandora._ If he ever sees her again. If she doesn’t kill him on sight. 

 

He hadn’t planned on dying on Pandora, he thinks. He just wanted to fuck with Vasquez. 

He thinks of Vasquez dead in the dirt, raw muscle and bone cracking in the relentless sun.

 

He remembers the office that should’ve been his. 

He thinks of the office that _could’ve_ been his. 

 

He realizes he’s never been to Elpis. 

He realizes he won’t ever see Vaughn again, or Sasha, or August, even. 

 

He thought he knew what he wanted, but there’s so much more, now that he has nothing.

_How did I fuck up this badly?_

He is so tired, suddenly, the weight of consequence suddenly unbearable, so his mind takes these thoughts and puts them away.

 

As the ground rises to meet the pod, he thinks of nothing.

 

 

 

 

_Fate has a fucked sense of humor,_ Rhys muses as he limps his way through the wreck of Helios. There’s still a nagging of someone else in the back of his mind, a soft static echo to his thoughts. A phantom itch makes his cybernetic arm whirr and twitch. The possibility of a ghost lingering in his system should make him more nervous but no, he can see him now, haunting the wreck of his ruined company. 

 

He expects rage, threats, the typical violent cacophony that follows Jack. He doesn’t expect resignation. The exhaustion. He can feel it in his own bones, the way the screen and sound stutter and clip. His temples throb. 

 

Killing heroes - or watching them die - doesn’t interest him.

 

And yet. 

 

The spark of data transfer is quick this time, but seconds feel like minutes feel like hours before he can rip the cable free of his ECHO port and he spins. His ghosts are real again, and his cybernetic arm spasms, rising, his joints _click-click-lock_ ing into place and he dimly wonders, if he'd sprung for the more advanced version, would he be able to feel his pulse as the thumb digs into the side of his throat.

 

The pain, the lack of oxygen, the static in his mind work in tandem to block out whatever Jack is saying because when is Jack ever not fucking talking, and his eyes roll back before he decides _I want - I want - I would very much like to survive this._

 

The edges are fuzzy but he can hardly process the location of the rebar before it’s split the casing of his bicep, and his vision blurs with spots of white heat _pain fuck oh my god_ but it’s working, and he can push his forearm back. His breath sounds ragged in his own ears and he’s swimming in it, holding onto the sound of _live live live_ as his fingers find a main wire and yank. 

 

A man of action.

 

He can’t think about it, he has no time and he can’t because this _isn’t_ what he wants but it’s the only way; he can’t think about the wires pulling free of the muscle they’ve been woven into, the nerves that snap apart from their synthetic partners as he pulls his body violently backwards. His blood is hot against his side and he thinks he might be screaming, but one more, one final pull and he’s free. He hits the ground hard, the glass of Jack’s trophy case crunching under his flesh, his real flesh, and it barely registers. 

 

This might feel a lot like dying, actually. He coughs and tries not to vomit as he watches his arm swing where it’s been impaled, but then there’s only Jack, inches from his face and snarling things that, in other circumstances, Rhys might be more excited about hearing. 

 

He has a shard of glass pointed at his own eye, blood pooling at the creases of skin where he grips it so so tight, and he doesn’t quite remember what got him to this point. It’s almost experimental when he drives the point into his temple, into the flesh around the ECHO port, and the ghost flickers out of being for just a moment and yes this is working, _this is it_ —

 

Jack’s panic is genuine enough to register above the ringing in Rhys’s ears, the heat behind his eyes, as he begins to pull the circuits out of his head. It’s so much _more_ , so much worse, the delicate wires snapping, each causing a spark, the heat of electricity in his eye, in his brain, and he could just die right now, he thinks. 

 

But _he’s_ still fucking there, begging now, and Rhys questions briefly if this is all a hallucination and he’s dismembering himself for nothing. Handsome Jack doesn’t beg, doesn’t go to his fucking knees for anyone, especially not someone like Rhys. 

 

He’s so close now, can’t stop, and the moment the glass edges under his iris, his vision bursts to distorted life, the ECHO system doing it’s best to keep working despite being pried from it’s base. He feels invincible, he feels beyond; maybe this is greatness. Maybe this is what he’s wanted. The eye flares to life with pain again, and he can feel the air leave his lungs in a hurried moan, and this cannot end soon enough. 

 

There’s so much wire, and as he pulls, he tries to imagine the nothingness Jack so fears, but you know, anything has to be better than this, so he grabs the last bit of wire and pulls, he screams an apology as Jack reaches, futile, and is gone. 

 

Rhys holds the ECHO implant carefully, and considers, but the agony in his bones, the fire alight in his nervous system demand his full attention, so he clumsily shoves it into his pocket because now what now _what now_ \- 

 

The panic and the shock make his breath come fast, light, and his vision fades. He thinks, just for a moment he thinks, knees crashing into the dirt, he thinks _can’t I just enjoy a fucking win for once?_ before the darkness swallows him whole.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from [Sleigh Bells, "And Saints"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jf1WBqNpmc), which is definitely recommended listening. 
> 
> A possibility of continuation, because Rhys pushes every button I have. We will see how it goes.


End file.
